


family plus one

by distractionpie



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, Family, First Impressions, M/M, Meeting the Parents, discontinued
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-26 08:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10782969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Judith Liebgott's son is coming home for the long weekend and he's bringing his latest boyfriend with him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started because of talking with Alia about Web and Lieb's mom being friends based on a head-canon I wrote, but the fic ended up being more backstory that that.

There were few things left that Judith Liebgott hadn't done in her years of parenting. From diapers to first dates, emergency room trips for the purpose of extracting crayons from they shouldn't be to graduations - she'd seen it all. Every one of her children but the youngest had brought somebody of importance home to meet her, and she had such encounters down pat. She trusted her children's judgement, for the most part, so there was no need to attempt to compensate for the threatening speeches her husband had made while he'd been alive, hinting at what he might do with his shotgun (entirely fictitious) and his shovel (even years after his back had been far too bad for any sort of physical work) should any of his children be wronged.

So when Joe casually mentions that he'll be in town for the weekend and is bringing his new partner with him, she's quick to assure him that they're both welcome, indeed encouraged, to stay under her roof rather than squandering money on a hotel. She knows very little about Joe's current man, but that doesn't concern her unduly, her eldest son has always been remarkably closed lipped about his relationships. Now they're going to be spending several days in her house so she'll have plenty of time to get the measure of this new guy and how they are together.

She sips a coffee and waits for them to arrive - Joe had said around noon, they were taking Friday off work, and when she'd checked online earlier their flight was recorded as having departed on time, but she knows how airports and airport traffic can be so she's prepared for their arrival to come anywhere between eleven and two. She already has a guest room made up, just the one because by the time she was Joe's age she had three children already and if Joe is bringing someone home then they've certainly been serious for long enough that separating them would just seem old-fashioned and foolish. She's vacuumed and dusted and generally made the place neat so as to make the best first impression on their guest although she knows that once Joe has spent a day or two in the house there's sure to be clutter scattered everywhere.

She's just taking her mug through to the kitchen to rinse when she hears a knock at the door, a little too hard and fast for politeness, she'd always told Joe that knocking was supposed to be a signal of his presence not an attempt at banging the door in, but he'd never quite learned. Depositing her mug on the counter, she gives her hands a quick wipe and goes to answer the door.

It's been too many months since she's last seen Joe but he hasn't changed a bit, still the scruffy little boy she raised even if he is taller than her now as she tugs him into her arms for a long hug, kissing both his cheeks as she pulls back and laughing at the way his nose crinkles as he grimaces and wipes imagined lipstick smudges from his cheeks.

Then she turns to the stranger. A tall young man, he stands in sharp contrast to Joe - his posture stiff and dressed more for a job interview than a cross-country flight and a casual stay with the family of somebody he ought to be close to. One thing is for certain, he's a looker. Joe has always had good taste when it comes to that sort of thing, it's the newcomer's character which concerns her. She reaches out to embrace him only to be blocked by him thrusting out a hand, grasping one of hers and shifting the greeting into an abrupt handshake.

She's thrown momentarily, but resists the temptation to cut a questioning glance across at her son, instead completing the handshake and saying, "You must be David, come in."

They have several bags between them, but Joe waves off her attempt to help. Normally her son travels light, the essentials only, he'll even skip over packing simple things like toothpaste if he can obtain it at their destination, so this abundance of luggage is uncharacteristic.

She's lets them get on with shifting their bags upstairs, returning to the kitchen to put a new pot of coffee on since she knows that Joe always likes a caffeine fix when he arrives. She sets out milk and sugar, Joe drinks it black but she has no idea of their guest’s preferences and a few minutes later they reconvene in the living room. She claims her usual armchair and Joe and David take the couch, Joe in an easy sprawl while David remains bolt upright keeping enough room to fit a whole other person in between him and Judith's son. The distance would have been strange for a young couple in her day, and in these fast modern times it seems almost suspicious.

Joe is quick to start up with lively chatter about all the things he'd got up to since they last spoke, strange people he'd met and a movie he saw and even the weather out east, and asking after her in the same way. Judith let him carry on like that for about five minutes, during the whole of which David never spoke a word, but Judith knows what her son looks like when trying to distract her so when he finally paused to take a breath and sip at his coffee she turns to David and asks, "So, how did the pair of you meet?"

He goes so pale at the question that she'd almost feel sorry for him but her first concern is her son and that reaction is worrying. Joe cuts in quick with a laugh, claiming that she doesn't want to hear that story, "It wasn't much of a first meeting, that was back before I was seeing Alice, we didn't get to know each other till later."

If he thinks that titbit of information with dissuade Judith's curiosity he's more naive than she ever meant to raise him. Alice, the last partner he'd talked to her about with any frequency, had been over two years ago and she's not quite sure what to make of the fact that Joe and David have known each other so long and yet Joe has only mentioned him to get scant week ago. Even by Joe's standards that seems unusually secretive.

"Well, how long have the pair of you been involved?" she tries instead, and isn't reassured by the way that they exchange glances before Joe once again answers for the pair of them.

"I guess that depends on how you count it," he says slowly, "We weren't serious at first, just uh..." and Judith is not so old nor unworldly that she doesn't suspect the implications of that but there are some elements of her son's life she doesn't need the details of.

"Well count it however you like," she says and Joe shrugs.

"About a year?" he says uncertainly. "We've been sharing a place these past three months, since my lease was up and it made sense."

Judith sips her coffee and very carefully reigns in her reaction. Involved for a year and living together for months now and yet Joe has hardly spoke of being with someone and has only just now brought that someone back to meet her - it's not a reassuring development.

And still not a single word out of David, who is apparently content to sit back and let her son do all the work in this conversation.

"Well, that does sound convenient," she says and Joe winces.

“It’s my apartment,” David says suddenly. “I mean, I own it.” Judith raises her eyebrows. Joe is smart but he’s all too inclined to get swept away by his emotions and she somehow doubts that the pair of them have any sort of formal tenancy arrangement that would leave her son protected if things turned sour between them.

“Well that’s nice for you,” she says, although she can’t help but wonder by exactly what means he’s acquired such an asset, when most respectable young people she knows are struggling to make rent.

She makes a little small talk and hears nothing reassuring. By her assessment David is upwardly mobile, obnoxiously determined that she ought to be impressed by his money, and, most damningly, has shown Joe not even a single scrap of affection.

She's always tried to trust her children's judgment now they're adults but... Well she just isn't quite sure what Joe sees in this man. There is one thing that concerns her most of all though.

“So, David,” she says, and she knows she’s about to make him even more uncomfortable than he already seems, but a mother has to protect her children first. “Do you love my son?”

Opposite her, David takes on the look of a cornered animal.

“Hey mom,” Joe interjects, “I meant to ask, can you show me where the spare batteries for the clock in our room are? I’d noticed it’s stopped when I was up there earlier.”

Judith pauses. “Of course dear, I’ll sort it out later.”

“ _Mom_.” Oh dear. She knows that set to Joe’s jaw. “I really think you should show me _now_ , before we forget.”

She considers for a moment and then places her cup down on the table. It really wouldn’t do get Joe’s ire up so early into the visit. “Okay. We’ll just be a few moments David.”

She stands and lets Joe lead her out of the room and up the stairs.

“Mom,” Joe says, once they’re safely in the guest room with two closed doors between them and David. “What’s with the inquisition treatment?” His whiney tone is exactly the same as has been since he was fifteen and wanting to know why he wasn’t allowed to stay out all night for a show, like her motherly worry is unreasonable and Judith rolls her eyes.

“You spring him on me after you’re already living together, and you’re surprised that I’m curious?”

Joe shakes his head. “You’re not just curious though, or you wouldn’t mind letting me do the talking instead of pressing him.”

"I’m just a little concerned. He seems…" she doesn’t want to be insulting to Joe’s choice of partners but there’s really no nice way to phrase what she’s thinking.

Joe sighs before she can think of an appropriate way to phrase ‘cold and arrogant’ without offending her son. “Webster’s parents are… formal.” He pauses then shakes his head. “No, sorry mom, but there’s no other way to say this - they’re the most terrifying people I’ve ever met. His dad is in politics and his mom’s a lawyer and when I met them I felt like I was getting a CIA interrogation and being found lacking. He’s not usually like this, but I think they’ve given him the wrong idea about how this whole meeting the family thing is supposed to go."

“This is uncharacteristic behaviour?” Judith asks and Joe laughs.

“Normally, he never shuts up,” Joe says, and his fond smile settles at least a few of Judith’s doubts. “But Web is a worrier at the best of times and I think he’s waiting for you to peel off your face and reveal yourself as the wicked witch of the west of future mother-in-laws."

Judith blinks in shock and surveys her son, who looks blithely back as her as if the implications of what he’s just said have slipped right past him, but it’s not a statement she can leave unacknowledged.

“Future mother in law?"

Those were words that she’d started to think she was never likely to hear from Joe, who brought people around twice, or perhaps three times, over the space of a few months but then inevitably came back alone with some story of how they just weren’t right for him for some petty reason or another. It’s shocking to hear him say it at all, let alone say something like that about somebody he’s bringing home for the first time, even if they do have a longer history than Joe did with most of his previous partners.

Joe’s eyes go a little wide with a look that’s oh so familiar to her as he realises his slip. She’s expecting him to backtrack and laugh the remark off but instead his expression settles into sheepishness as he says, “It’s, I've not been ring shopping or anything. It's too soon. I just..."

And Judith realises with a jolt that he means this. Her baby boy is thinking of marrying the awkward young man in her living room, has found somebody he wants to spent the rest of his life with, and whatever her doubts she had always taught him to pursue what makes him happy and that she would support him in that and she can’t back down from that now. "Well, you always did know your own mind," she concedes, and for all that she always has and always will worry over him she can’t deny that her Joe is a smart boy whose reckless choices have almost always paid off. “I suppose I’ll just have to do my best to show him that there is no peeling off of faces in this house.”

Joe laughs and then, to Judith’s surprise, flings his arms around her. “You’re gonna love him, mom,” he murmurs, sounding so full of hope and determination that she aches for him.


	2. Chapter 2

David didn’t get any less strange over dinner that night, but Judith decided to trust Joe’s assertion that it’s a show of nerves and does her best to be as welcoming as possible. When she let Joe lead the conversation, David opened up a little though he was still halting when addressing her.

By breakfast the next morning, David seems a little steadier, he even manages to make polite inquiries about her own plans for the weekend. He seems utterly uncomfortable doing so, and isn’t at all subtle about the sideways glances he’s shooting to Joe, who she frankly suspects of having given his boyfriend some sort of script or list of safe topics after she’d gone to bed last night, so the display itself doesn’t inspire much confidence, but she supposes that she can at least credit that David shows some signs of making an effort over their coffee and toast.

She excuses herself when they’re done, leaving the boys to see to the dishes while she tends to other morning chores, and as she passes back by the kitchen door she’s overhears them talking.

“You know you don’t have to pretend to like coffee just because my mom made it for you,” Joe says, and Judith pauses. Her own mother raised her not to eavesdrop, but this is her house and her son, and they’re in kitchen not anywhere private, and after Joe’s claims that David was intimidated by her, she’s curious as to his nature outside of her presence.

“I’m trying to be polite,” she hears David say and then there’s a muffled clatter and a long pause before Joe responds.

“You know she’ll like you better when you stop being ‘polite’ and start being yourself,” he says. “I know I did.”

They’re quiet then and after a few moments she slowly pushes the door open. David is standing by the sink rinsing out his mug and Joe stands behind him, arms wrapped around his chest and chin resting on his shoulder, as she watches Joe turns his head and presses quick kiss to David’s jaw. They make for a sweet, domestic picture, miles removed from the distance and discomfort she saw between them yesterday.

She's loathe to interrupt them, but she also knows Joe needs to be out of the house soon and she suspects that if she leaves them to get on with things he might become distracted. As she understands it, this event he's headed to is part of the qualifying procedure for some kind of award that would give his career a boost and, as he'd confided to her over the phone, came with a cash prize that would give him the start-up investment he needed to open his own barber shop, instead of working for somebody else's profit.

She walks in and says, "It's a lovely morning, but you don't want to be late now do you, Joe?"

She sees David tense and turn his head in her direction, but Joe just laughs and says, "I've got plenty of time mom."

"Not if you're going to be driving sensibly," she chides and after another minute of fussing with the dishes Joe finally peels himself away from David with a dramatic sigh.

David has stuck close to Joe since they arrived, and when Joe departs she's slightly concerned that he's going to retreat up into the bedroom she's put them in. He follows Joe out to his rental car for a goodbye she lets them have in private, and once Joe has driven off he comes back through and joins her in the living room. Now she knows what to look for she can see the poorly veiled fear in his eyes, as he stands as if braced for attack or another interrogation.

Still, he's there, so scared of her as he may be, he's also got the guts to be brave about it. She wishes that Joe had thought to warn her ahead of time that the he'd be so anxious of her; she would have been more careful in her initial approach had she known. Still, dwelling on mistakes didn't get them mended.

"Well dear, now that Joseph is out of the way we can down to important matters," she says, then regrets her words when David turns even paler. She understood that the weather in the North East hardly loaned itself to tanning, but he looks positively anaemic – she’d worry they weren’t eating right, but Joe had seemed as healthy as ever.

She knows what she has to do though, she has a moral duty as a mother, so she walks over to the bookshelf and pulls down a stack of three thick leather bound albums, laying them out on the table. She's not entirely proud of the fact that Joe has three times what his siblings have in this respect, but the fact was that by the third child all of the pictures of sleeping infants started to look the same.

She opens the first album and is gratified by the wide-eyed look on David's face when he realises what she's sharing with him, but then he bites his lip, “I’m not sure... I wouldn't want Joe to be uncomfortable with me seeing these.”

She’s about to say that turnabout is fair play and she has no doubt that her son’s natural inquisitiveness will push him to seek out similar material from David’s parents, but then she remembers what Joe had said about them being cold. Instead she laughs. “He’ll complain,” she concedes, “But I told him that the day I stopped sharing his baby photos was the same day I’d stop sharing his sisters’, and he gets enough amusement from their embarrassment for it to be worth him enduring a little of the same.”

David still looks hesitant, so she says, “If you’d rather, you can look at them when he’s present, but he knew when he decided to bring you here that I’d show them to you. It’s a family rule.”

David takes the album from her like it might break, and he's quiet as she guides him through the earlier pages: baby Joe bundled up in bright yellow blankets, then crawling across the rug, and then a little bigger still and standing on his own two feet and clutching tight to the side of the table for support.

As they flip towards school age Joe shifts from a baby to a child with the beginnings to a resemblance to the man he's grown into and she senses that those are a little more interesting for David, as he starts to ask occasional questions about the context of the images.

As they turn to a page with an image of Joe and Sarah in costume, baby Sarah just barely standing and dressed in a red dress and hood and four-year-old Joe in a wolf onesie, David hums. "Funny," he says, "But I had him pegged as the type to have gone as a superhero."

He's closer to the mark than he thinks, and most of the pages are sorted chronologically, but there are a few arranged by theme and so she pages ahead to Halloween. “Oh, he had a whole gallery of those costumes,” she says, passing the book back over to him, "A few villains too." From the point he'd been old enough to have some say in his own outfit right up until he'd got too old for dressing up, it had always been something from those comics of his.

“Wow…” David says as he examines the page, a decade of carefully designed imitations of whatever Joe's personal hero was that year. “That is a lot.”

“Yes, he went through a phase where those were all he would wear. Oh, the amount of negotiation it used to take to get him to even just put a sweater on over the top of the outfit. Four girls after him, but he was by far the most trouble when it came to clothes - it took him years to outgrow wanting to dress like a superhero every day.”

“I don’t know,” David says, dryly. “I’ve seen his t-shirt drawer. I think he might still be in that phase.”

It startles a laugh out of her and when he smiles back she finally thinks she’s getting a glimpse of what it is that Joe sees in him. It’s not quite the opening of a floodgate, but his questions come a little faster as he flips through the pages of the album and he laughs at some of her jokes, hesitantly at first, like he's not quite sure if he's included in them or not, but gradually his awkwardness eases.

They're halfway through the second album when she leaves him alone to make a start on lunch. He offers to help, but the last thing she needs is an inexperienced cook underfoot in her kitchen, so she declines.

Once the soup is heating on the stove she returns, only to see him paused over a page with a most peculiar look.

She walks over, wondering what’s on the page and… ah.

The picture is from a family reunion a few years ago, it should really be in the later album but it must have been misplaced. It had been a scorching July weekend and they’d faced a constant challenge trying to keep cool and to keep the children taking breaks from playing in the sunshine to cool down and rehydrate. Joe is shirtless in the picture, a red flush on sunburn already forming across his shoulders, but she doesn’t think that’s what has caught David’s eye. In the photo Joe reclines in the grass with his head resting on a backpack, eyes heavy lidded and one arm curled watchfully over Judith’s great-niece (a distant cousin to Joe and only three months old at the time) as she sleeps laid out across his chest.

Her eldest girl, Sarah, had once told Judith that her best hope for grandchildren lay with Joe, as he was the only one of them for whom the process wouldn’t involve having to birth. She’d been quick to point out that she’d be supportive of any of her girls if they chose to adopt and so the pain was not in fact unavoidable, but Sarah had still looked dubious and insisted that Joe remained the best option. Joe’s previous choice in partners had never seemed compatible with that suggestion but David runs his thumb over that picture of Joe with the baby with a longing that makes her wonder.

"He always did have a knack with little ones," she says, and David startles. "I think it comes from having so much practise, being the oldest and all. Do you have any siblings?"

"Two," David says, "My brother studies law at Columbia, and my sister was due to start college this year but she's taking a year out to travel around Europe. She got her riding instructor to give her a job helping out instead of her paying for lessons on Saturdays so she could save up, then brought the tickets herself and presented our parents with a fait accompli." He looks proud and Judith laughs.

"Oh my, and here I thought the time that Sarah snuck off to Coachella was quite the stunt of teenage cunning," she says, settling onto the couch with a mind to share a few stories of the trouble Joe had been.

*

By the time Joe arrives home, David has relaxed considerably and he interrupts them in a rousing discussion of Joe's most annoying habits. She's happy to know that he's living with somebody who won't put up with his terrible mug hoarding tendencies - last time she'd visited him while he was living alone she's found at least half a dozen growing mould in locations mugs had no place being, although she'd tried to impress upon him what a hazard that bad habit was she suspected she'd had no more success then than she ever had when he was an adolescent.

Joe is ebullient and unbothered by the knowledge that she's been telling his partner a whole host of unflattering anecdotes, talking confidently of how certain he is to be one of the award's recipients. The whole competition process is more complicated than she can follow, but David nods along like he understands and every time Joe starts to wind down he asks another question that sets him off on a new round of exultation, and David seems content to encourage him and bask in the glow of his happiness.

Joe insists on ordering takeout, despite her reminding him that there’s plenty of perfectly good food in the house, and she indulges her request to eat it sat on the couch, with a comedy she’s not seen in years playing on the television that they’re only half paying attention to, since Joe can’t seem to go five minutes without thinking of some other aspect of his day that he’s overflowing with the need to share.

When they’ve done eating they put a second movie on, some science fiction piece of Joe’s choosing that won’t hold her attention at all, she bows out, partly out of genuine fatigue and partly to give the boys a little alone time.

Judith retreats up to her room and prepares for bed. She turns her radio on low, she’s grown accustomed to sleeping with it on – a habit she’d picked up when she’d found herself alone after years of having a home filled with all the noises of a family. She’s got three more chapters of a somewhat uninspiring romance novel to read before her book club meeting on Monday evening and she’s made a decent headway when she hears a several unexpected thuds.

It must be the boys, only down the hall from her, though she’d thought they’d stay downstairs watching television much longer, the movie they put on can’t have played out yet and she wouldn’t have been surprised if they stayed for a third being the energetic young men they are and free to sleep in the next morning, but it seems they have different plans. They're both a little too old for an open-door rule and goodness knows Joe had gone to great lengths to circumvent and defy it as an adolescent so it was probably too much to hope for that he'd outgrown such contrariness. David still seems a little too rigid to let Joe talk him into any shenanigans, but she leans over and turns her radio up a little just in case.

After all, she remembers how it was to be young and in love.


End file.
